But these figures weren't calculated from a baseline of forest extent in 1900. Rather, they were calculated by using the outputs of models fed with current climate data. This means that they are not very accurate.

In a recent study we show that the loss of forests in tropical Africa in the past century is far less severe than previously estimated. Our analysis shows that forests have, on average, shrunk by 21.7%.

But deforestation has not been homogeneous. Some areas have been hit much worse than others: for example West and East African forests have been reduced by as much as 80% to 90%.

And, in a particularly surprising result, we found that in some areas of Central Africa, forests have in fact encroached onto savannas, resulting in a net forest expansion, although we don't yet know what the causes are.

The results of our study represent good news because deforestation rates are not as bad as previously thought. This also has major implications for conservation efforts in both forests and savannas.

A new body of literature is developing around the idea that natural disturbances play a strong role in determining natural vegetation, and shows that earlier studies incorrectly labelled ancient savannas as newly deforested regions. These earlier studies suggested that forests were more widespread in Africa in the past, which explains the previous very high deforestation rates.

Our research paints a different picture and shows that these previous analyses have been incorrect.

New spatial modelling

Our conclusions are different because we relied on two sources of information that allowed us to come up with a much more accurate account:

paleo-environmental indicators, such as plant remains, preserved in lake sediments or soils, to reconstruct past vegetation; and

historical accounts and maps.

Using paleo-environmental indicators was a real challenge. This was because paleodata are relatively rare in Africa, especially in West Africa and the Congo Basin and particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is due to a paucity of sedimentary archives, and sometimes to access issues to study sites because of political instability.

To address this scarcity problem, we also included information from historical maps and documents dating back to around 1900. These sometimes include description of vegetation. For example, we used the map of "the great forest region" that Henry M. Stanley designed during the relief expedition of Emin Pacha (1886-1889).

By combining these data sources and using a statistical model, we were able to spatially model the forest extent in 1900 and in 2000, and to provide updated deforestation rates. We estimated that forests were not as widespread as previously thought in tropical Africa, resulting in smaller deforestation rates. We found that tropical forests have decreased by 21.7%, a figure substantially smaller than the 55% previously cited.

In contrast, when looking at local estimates of deforestation in West and East Africa, our estimates show an almost complete disappearance of forests. We estimated deforestation rates of 80% and 90% for West Africa and East Africa, respectively.

On the other hand, Central African forests have expanded by 1.4% at the expense of savannas. Once again, this pattern was not homogeneous: some areas of the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda have been deforested, while areas of Central African Republic and Gabon have been afforested.

Implications

This first data-driven reconstruction of historical forest and savanna distributions at the continental scale has strong implications for savanna and forest conservation as it challenges some policies currently being pursued.

For example, there is a global effort to increase the number of trees that can trap carbon. But now that an historical baseline exists, it is urgent to focus efforts in areas that have been truly deforested rather than in areas that have long been savannas. Indeed, planting forest trees in savannas can result in a decrease in biodiversity and the loss of unique ecosystems.

Even if people completely stopped converting tropical forests into farmland, the impacts of tropical deforestation would continue to be felt for many years to come. That's the conclusion of researchers reporting in the Cell ...

National parks and nature reserves in South America, Africa and Asia, created to protect wildlife, heritage sites and the territory of indigenous people, are reducing carbon emissions from tropical deforestation by a third, ...

Recommended for you

Greenland is melting faster than scientists previously thought—and will likely lead to faster sea level rise—thanks to the continued, accelerating warming of the Earth's atmosphere, a new study has found.

A two to three-fold increase in heatwave activity in the United Kingdom since the late 19th century has been identified in a new analysis of historical daily temperature data led by University of Warwick scientists.

For many years, China has been struggling to tackle high pollution levels that are crippling its major cities. Indeed, a recent study by researchers at Chinese Hong Kong University has found that air pollution in the country ...

An international team of researchers has found evidence that suggests the cooling effect of aerosols in cumulus and MSC clouds is twice as high as thought. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes ...

0 comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.